My wife, Donna, gave her usual excellent advice. It takes a special personality to be married to a writer. I thank her for her decades of patience and understanding when each day for many hours I become a hermit.
David Morrell is an Edgar and Anthony finalist, a Nero and Macavity winner, and a recipient of the prestigious career achievement ThrillerMaster award from the International Thriller Writers. His debut novel, First Blood, introduced the character Rambo to the world. He has written twenty-nine works of fiction that have been translated into thirty languages. He is a former literature professor at the University of Iowa and received his PhD from Pennsylvania State University.
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Also by David Morrell
Novels
First Blood
Testament
Last Reveille
The Totem
Blood Oath
The Brotherhood of the Rose
The Fraternity of the Stone
Rambo (First Blood Part II)
The League of Night and Fog
Rambo III
The Fifth Profession
The Covenant of the Flame
Assumed Identity
Desperate Measures
The Totem (Complete and Unaltered)
Extreme Denial
Double Image
Burnt Sienna
Long Lost
The Protector
Creepers
Scavenger
The Spy Who Came for Christmas
The Shimmer
The Naked Edge
Murder as a Fine Art
Short Fiction
The Hundred-Year Christmas
Black Evening
Nightscape
Illustrated Fiction
Captain America: The Chosen
Amazing Spider-Man: Peter Parker—The One and Only
Nonfiction
John Barth: An Introduction
Fireflies: A Father’s Tale of Love and Loss
The Successful Novelist: A Lifetime of Lessons about Writing and Publishing
Edited By
American Fiction, American Myth: Essays by Philip Young
edited by David Morrell and Sandra Spanier
Tesseracts Thirteen: Chilling Tales of the Great White North
edited by Nancy Kilpatrick and David Morrell
Thrillers: 100 Must-Reads
edited by David Morrell and Hank Wagner
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Introduction
Epigraph
One: The Killing Zone
Two: The Curtained Pew
Three: The House of Death
Four: The Crystal Palace
Five: The Throne Room
Six: The Warehouse of Grief
Seven: The Palace Dinner
Eight: The Wheel of Fortune
Nine: Bedlam
Ten: Watford
Eleven: A Darkness within a Darkness
Twelve: From the Workhouse to the Graveyard
Thirteen: A Bottomless Inner World
Afterword: More Adventures with the Opium-Eater
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by David Morrell
Newsletters
Copyright
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2015 by Morrell Enterprises, Inc.
Author photograph by Jennifer Esperanza
Cover design by Matt Tanner; art by Marc Yankus
Cover copyright © 2015 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First ebook edition: March 2015
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ISBN 978-0-316-32396-3
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